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►fficial Instruction in The Countries 
of Middle and Southern America 

An Address Delivered at the Annual Meeting of the 

National Association of State Universities 

Held at 

New Orleans, Monday and Tuesday 

November 7 and 8, 1921 

By Peter H. Goldsmith, Director of the Interamerican 
Division of the American Association for Inter- 
national Conciliation and of the Magazine 
Inter-America 




Reprinted from the Transactions and Proceedings of the National Association 
of State Universities in the United States of America for the 
Interamerican Division of the American Associa- 
tion for International Conciliation 

1922 



OFFICIAL INSTRUCTION IN THE COUNTRIES 
OF MIDDLE AND SOUTHERN AMERICA 

By Peter H. Goldsmith, Director of the Interamerican 
Division of the American Association for Inter- • 
national Conciliation and of the Magazine 
Inter-America 



INTRODUCTION 
GENTLEMEN : 

That this body of educators, all intensely occupied 
with local or regional duties and all deeply con- 
cerned with professional problems that clamor for con- 
sideration, counsel and solution, should invite an out- 
sider to discuss a subject as seemingly alien as that in- 
dicated by the title of this address is but another evidence 
of the catholicity of interests and thought that has al- 
ways characterized the presidents and faculties of our 
state, universities. I find myself therefore in an atmos- 
phere of intellectual sympathy and receptivity. 

To treat of education, or, more properly, of instruc- 
tion, in the smallest and least complex of the American 
republics, Avith any degree of adequateness, in the com- 
pass of an address, obviously would be impossible. How 
much more so would it be to treat of this subject in twenty 
republics, some with enormous areas and vast popula- 
tions, and all with national idiosyncrasies that render 
them as unlike one another as the nations of Europe, in 
physical constitutions, populations, civilizations, institu- 
tions, national interests and points of view? I must con- 
fine myself therefore to presenting a bare outline, accom- 
panied by mere assertions, without proofs or elabora- 
tions. I shall try, however, to limit myself to assertions 
capable of substantiation. 

A few words as to terms are necessary. 

The term "instruction" is used purposely and by 
preference to designate that which is taught, what is to 



be studied, the teacher's contribution; and, in this sense, 
it is quite different from "education," which is training, 
preparation : the result in the learner of instruction, com- 
prehension, reflection and practice. Incidental reference 
mav be made to education in this sense, to the state of 
society as the result of instruction, but the theme is "in- 
struction" as defined. 

In like manner the term "official instruction" is used 
consciously and by choice, since it is both more accurate 
and more suggestive than "public instruction" and more 
convenient in a discussion that deals with the subject in 
the middle and southern countries of America. "Public 
instruction," as this term is currently used among us, 
suggests popular instruction, imparted in primary or 
secondary schools open to the public, and supported by 
the people, and not by parents, guardians or pupils. Why 
we should conceive of it as popular and as limited to 
grades below the university is not clear. Perhaps we do 
so from habit, based on the fact that our first, our typical, 
universities, were neither supported by the public, nor 
open to the public in the sense that the public could use 
them without the payment of fees. We seldom think of 
our two great national schools — the Military Academy at 
West Point and the Naval Academy at Annapolis — as 
public schools. Yet they are, in a true sense; for both 
are supported by the people, and both are open to the 
public — as far as the public can qualify and can be ad- 
mitted — without the payment of fees. 

The term "official instruction" is preferable to "public 
instruction," because it is new and therefore has not 
acquired the more or less rigid implication of "public 
instruction," and we can employ it with less need of ex- 
planation and less likelihood of misapprehension in our 
study of countries where official instruction, from the 
kindergarten through the university, is the rule. 

By "official instruction" is meant all instruction initi- 
ated, administered and controlled by the officers of the 
people, whether gratuitous or not. It happens that 
throughout the whole of America official instruction is 
gratuitous, almost without exception; but it is readily 
conceivable that it might not be so; and it would in no 
'sense cease to be official if fees were charged. 

The United Slates is characterized by a great variety 
of official instruction, greater perhaps than any other 
country in the world. Beginning with the smallest center 

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of initiative, support, administration and control, we 
have official instruction in the schools of the (owns, conn- 
ties, municipalities and states — those of the latter being 
normal, technical or professional schools and universities; 
and, finally, in national schools, under federal control, al- 
most negligible, and limited, in the main, to the two 
academies already mentioned. 

With us the center of initiative is local or regional. 
Individuals or groups demand, organize, support and con- 
trol. This is a fundamental characteristic of our whole 
system of instruction, and, indeed, of our entire civiliza- 
tion. In regard to the fabric of our Official instruction, 
it might be said that it is like an old-fashioned pieced 
quilt, made up of a vast number of squares, diamonds,, 
triangles, circles, of different textures, qualities and colors. 
We have no consciously designed and harmoniously 
wrought national fabric, because we have no national plan 
or system, and no national center of initiative, administra- 
tion and control. We lack a minister or department of 
instruction. Our Bureau of Education, with the best of 
intentions, is but a gatherer of information, a modest and 
hesitating offerer of suggestions, a shadowy afterthought, 
as it were. Is it not remarkable — to say the least — that 
the people of all peoples that from the beginning has 
laid most stress on education should have made absolutely 
no provision, as a nation, for instruction? This is not a 
complaint, a censure. To have made federal provision for 
instruction might have been a mistake. It is as possible 
that the failure to establish a national department of in- 
struction, with a secretary of instruction in the cabinet, 
was due rather to wise foresight than to neglect. The re- 
sult, without such a department, has been astonishingly 
good ; would it have been as good, would it have been bet- 
ter, with it? Who can say? 



II 

THE CENTRAL OR FEDERAL GOVERNMENTS AND 
OFFICIAL INSTRUCTION 

Turning now toward the middle and southern coun- 
tries of America, we find, in general, a totally different 
situation. Recognition and appreciation of this differ- 
ence are essential to the comprehension, first, of the pres- 
ent systems of official instruction that prevail in them; 



and, second, of the peculiar difficulties that have attended 
and continue to attend these systems. 

1. Official instruction as a highly centralized na- 
tional function. — Official instruction is a wholly national 
function in all these countries, with one notable exception 
— Brazil — which will be discussed separately. In all the 
republics except Brazil provision is made for instruction 
by the creation of a national department — ministerio or 
secretaria — the head of which holds a place in the cabinet, 
as follows : Argentina, minister of justice and public in- 
struction ; Bolivia, minister of public instruction and agri- 
culture; Colombia, minister of public instruction; Costa 
Rica, minister of public instruction; Cuba, secretary of 
public instruction and fine arts; Chile, minister of justice 
and public instruction; Dominican Republic, secretary of 
public instruction; Ecuador, minister of public instruc- 
tion; Guatemala, minister of public instruction; Haiti, 
minister of public instruction and justice; Honduras, 
minister of public instruction ; Mexico, minister of public 
instruction; Nicaragua, minister of foreign relations and 
public instruction; Panama, minister of public instruc- 
tion; Paraguay, minister of justice and public instruc- 
tion ; Salvador, minister of public instruction ; TJraguay, 
minister of public instruction ; Venezuela, minister of pub- 
lic instruction. These departments initiate, administer 
and control; they appoint, or pass on the appointments 
of, superintendents, rectors and principals, professors and 
teachers, and they establish curricula, designate texts and 
construct buildings. Their authority extends to official 
instruction of all kinds; in universities, normal schools, 
colleges (colegios, institutos, liceos — institutions of sec- 
ondary instruction) and primary schools. All private, 
group or denominational institutions of instruction are 
subject to their inspection and supervision. If there are 
officers in the states, provinces, departamentos (the largest 
territorial and administrative divisions within the nations 
bear one of these three names), or in the municipalities 
or towns, they are creatures of and subject to the national 
departments of instruction. Initiative usually originates 
with these departments, and if it springs from communi- 
ties, provinces or states, decisive and institutive action 
lies with the national departments of instruction. There- 
fore the systems of instruction are everywhere arterial, 
that is, the impulse is from the heart, the center, outward 
into all the ramifications of the national entities and not, as 



here, where there are scores of thousands of centers of 
initiative, support, administration and control. 

I give a few illustrations. If the people of a certain 
barrio — a more or less indeterminate demaraction that 
•corresponds with our "ward" — in tire city of Jujuy, the 
capital of a small state of the same name in the extreme 
north of Argentina,, desire an additional primary school, 
thej- do not appeal to the state government, nor do they 
raise the money themselves for the building, and then begin 
construction, willy-nilly; but they appeal through the 
municipal and provincial, state or departmental govern- 
ment to the ministry of public instruction in Buenos 
Aires, the national capital, 1,400 kilometers away; and 
the result depends entirely on the central body. If the 
citizens of Pnnta Arenas, Chile, the southernmost city 
of the world — a flourishing town of some 25,000 inhabi- 
tants — would have a new secondary school for boys, they 
must request it of the ministry of justice and public in- 
struction in Santiago, 1,500 kilometers away. If granted, 
it would be supported by the national treasury, and it 
would be under the direct supervision of the ministry. 
The present national government of Peru has literally 
remade the whole S} T stem of official instruction in that 
republic, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and 
importing some tAventy-five specialists from the United 
States to reorganize and direct every branch of it. 

This characteristic centralization of initiative, ad- 
ministration and support, I am persuaded, was not due to 
any radical difference between the mental capacities and 
tendencies of the initiators of the systems of official in- 
struction in these countries and those of the founders of 
the United States, who left the whole question of instruc- 
tion to the states, municipalities, towns and counties. Only 
the circumstances and the habits of the people were differ- 
ent. The systems of official instruction in the middle and 
southern countries of America grew out of the exigencies 
of the cases at the time of the attainment of independence, 
and out of customs already established during the period 
of incubation, that is, under the colonial regime. During 
the Spanish regime official instruction was administered 
either by the crown or bv the church, from the colonial 
center outward in each region. The official representa- 
tives of the mother-country — directly or through the 
church, or occasionally by merely holding aloof and en- 
couraging, and giving free scope to, ecclesiastical initia- 



tive and administration — determined the extent and char- 
acter of instruction, the location of institutions and the 
personnel. In every region, naturally, the number of 
Europeans was small, at first. Groups of white men es- 
tablished themselves where they could secure a foothold. 
They were surrounded by great numbers of aborigines, to 
whom, they were aliens, intruders and enemies. Tlhe 
Spanish conquerors and masters, after taking thought for 
their own safety and their material wants, made provision 
for their spiritual needs and the intellectual requirements 
of their children, the Creoles. With creditable prevision 
and energy, they established for them primary and secon- 
dary schools, and, in most regions, universities. Notable 
instances of the latter were the universities in Santo 
Domingo, Mexico, Lima, Bogota and Cordoba. As in 
Spain, the main stimulus came, however, from the crown 
and the papal authorities. After schools were provided 
for the Creoles — children of Europeans born in America — 
the crown and the church made commendable effort to 
christianize and to educate the Indians— a task so nearly 
impossible that it is still unaccomplished, after four cen- 
turies of greater or less exertion. Instruction was, I think, 
as extensive and as thorough, however different, and the 
average of education was as high, among the Europeans 
and their descendents in the middle and southern countries 
of America as they were in the United States during the 
colonial period ; and I incline to the opinion that the same 
is tine to-day. It may be fairly said also that more atten- 
tion was given to the intellectual and technical education 
of the Indians in the countries we are studying than in the 
English colonies of North America and later in the United 
States. The problem of the aborigines Avas solved very 
differently in the center and south from what it was in the 
north. As I have said, the Spaniards strove, according to 
their lights, to christianize, and, to a certain extent, to 
educate the indigenes, while at the same time exploiting 
and maltreating them; our ancestors did not so much ex- 
ploit — our North American Indians were not readily ex- 
ploitable — but the} r pushed them back, cheated them, 
robbed them, slew them directly or indirectly, and dis- 
possessed them and caused them to disappear. Here the 
Indians soon ceased to be a problem; they vanished. 
Apart from the later problem of giving instruction to the 
negroes, our problem, both in colonial times and after 
independence, was extremely simple; that of merely letting 



the people — all of whom were clamoring for instruction, 
would have it at all hazards, would even fight for it, were 
willing to pay the price necessary for it — instruct them- 
selves. 

Here you have in the mere statement of a difference 
between populations whole volumes of sociology, philos- 
ophy, civics, economics and religion. In this difference 
between the elements that had to be dealt with in some 
of the middle and southern countries of America and in 
the British colonies and later in the United States and 
Canada is to be found an explanation of a divergence in 
history and civilization that has extended over three hun- 
dred years. 

Thus, during the colonial period in the middle and 
southern countries, tendencies were brought from beyond 
the seas, systems were implanted and community habits 
were formed. Independence — in spite of the bloodshed, 
the painful delays and the sore disappointments, that 
accompanied its attainment — came with comparative sud- 
denness to all the American peoples. In the United States 
the colonies or provinces had become in a measure self- 
sufficient and self-instructing prior to independence. After 
independence we but followed our habits. Besides, we had 
been thirteen colonies and we became thirteen federated 
states, with slightly varying traits and tendencies. These 
thirteen states might have become thirteen separate re- 
publics. We stood together, however, as we were con- 
tiguous and more or less homogeneous. Our center — 
successively Philadelphia, New York, Washington — was 
at first politically remote from each state. We were held 
together at the beginning by very slight and elastic ties. 
According to our nature and disposition, each state, each 
community, went its own way and did for itself what it 
desired to have done, got for itself what it could get, 
without giving much thought to the national government. 

The middle and southern countries could not form 
a union. It was materially — not to say politically — im- 
possible. Consequently, when they did establish separate 
nationalities, the several regions and the several centers 
of population of each of these nationalities were, as a rule, 
nearer, physically and politically, to their centers of gov- 
ernment than our states, our communities, were to our 
center. The national governments therefore, from the 
very nature of the cases and from the beginning, meant 
more to them; while we, from the mid-colonial period, 



have cherished the idea of regional rights, initiative, 
rivalry, responsibility and independence, voiced constitu- 
tionally in "states' rights." 

In practice, the nations descended, on their European 
side, from Spain, inherited the habits and took over the 
machinery implanted by the mother-country. Either they, 
as national entities, had to continue the task of instruc- 
tion, or it would not be continued at all. Provincial 
or community rights, initiative, responsibility* and in- 
dependence had never been permitted, much less en- 
couraged and developed; and if the national administra- 
tions had not made provision for instruction, the prob- 
ability is that it would have declined rapidly. The several 
governments undertook to meet the need by providing 
for the creation of ministries or departments of public 
instruction. The success of these departments was de- 
pendent, in the main, on the character of the population 
to be instructed. 

These elements, varying in degrees and number, ac- 
cording to the country, were as follows : Europeans born, 
mostly Spanish; Creoles, descendants of Europeans, born 
in America; mestizos, crosses between Europeans and 
Indians; Indians in great variety; octoroons, quadroons, 
mulattos, negroes; and zambos, or crosses between negroes 
and Indians. With the exception of the European born 
and the Creoles, on one hand, and on the other, the 
mestizos, Indians, mulattos, negroes and zambos that had 
sustained close relations with the Spaniards and Creoles 
in community life — a relatively small number of the popu- 
lation in most of the countries — the people did not desire 
and have never desired instruction. They lacked at the 
beginning and they still lack the inherent craving for 
knowledge and the ambition for economic and social ad- 
vancement that are the basis of education. Consequently, 
in most of the countries the process of instruction has al- 
ways been a constant drive outward from the national 
center. 

2. Official instruction as a distributed function. — 
Brazil, with a territory greater than that of the con- 
tiguous territory of the United States, and a population 
of approximately thirty million inhabitants, is more like 
the United States than any other American republic, in 
that, from the beginning, the community and regional 
spirit has been strong and effective. The historian ob- 
serves that very early in the development of a European 



civilization in Brazil localities manifested independent 
life, initiative, a desire to control their own destinies and 
a sense of rivalry. This is to be seen in the jealousies that 
existed between the regions that afterward developed into 
states; in the insurrections of Pernambuco and of Minas 
Geraes; in the feuds between the Paulists and the em- 
houbas;* in the tendency manifested in one or another 
locality to criticize, and to hold aloof from, Rio de Janeiro, 
the city that was to become the federal capital. Both 
during the colonial period and under the empire — which 
was a prolongation of the Portuguese system with a 
throne in America — and from the establishment of the 
republic, local initiative and independence characterized 
the Brazilian people. Brazil is the only American re- 
public, except the United States, that does not have a 
national ministry or department of instruction with ab- 
solute administrative powers. The several states enjoy, 
and make effective use of, a considerable degree of autono- 
my, and every state has its own institutions of instruction, 
while within each state are similar institutions main- 
tained by municipalities, towns or communities, under the 
supervision of the state government. 

On the other hand, the federal government performs 
a function in supplying and administering instruction : 
through the Ministerio de Justicia e Negocios Interiores 
it controls the institutions of instruction of the federal 
district, which includes Rio de Janeiro; it maintains a 
number of important institutions for professional and 
technical instruction in different cities of the republic; 
it supports and administers the schools of the territory 
of Acre : all primary or secondary ; and, through the re- 
cently constituted Conselho Superior de InstruccTio, it 
brings together once or twice a year the heads of institu- 
tions for conference in Rio de Janeiro. It may be said 
that the Conselho Superior de Instruc^ao also serves the 
republic in much the same manner as our Bureau of Edu- 
cation. 

In all the countries of middle and southern America 
official instruction is gratuitous, from the primary schools 
through the university, including professional and techni- 
cal institutions. One of the first shocks sustained by 



* •'"Stranger," "outsiders," "base fellows:" according to Rio Branco 
(Equisse de I'histoire du Bresil), emboaba was derived from the Guarani 
word amo, "far," "far off," "at a distance," and aba, "man," so that 
emboaba would be a "man from afar," an outsider." 



students from these countries when they come to the 
United States to study in our colleges, universities or 
technical schools is that occasioned by the requirement of 
tuition. 



Ill 
SOURCES OF INSPIRATION AND EQUIPMENT 

The first sources of inspiration and equipment were, 
naturally, thei mother-countries. For more than 'two 
centuries the colonies were but projections in America of 
Spain and Portugal. The policy of the crown and of the 
papal authorities, the isolation of the overseas possessions 
and the barrier of language prevented the influx of extra- 
peninsular ideas. The peoples were as nearly incomuni- 
cados as jealous governmental vigilance and remote- 
ness from alien influences could make them. By the 
middle of the eighteenth century, however, the weaken- 
ing of the mother-countries and the consequent relaxing 
of watchfulness, together with the increased economic 
strength of the colonies, the development of a separatist 
consciousness and character, and the hostility of the 
•Creoles, civilized mestizos, Indians, mulattos, negroes and 
zambos toward the resident peninsular Spaniards and 
Portuguese rendered important groups in each of the 
countries hospitable to non-Iberian ideas. French and 
English books began to make their way southward. Being 
contraband, they were all the more ardently sought and 
cherished. 

The struggle for and the attainment of independence 
in the United States and the events of the French revolu- 
tion awakened a glow of hope and expectation from the 
Rio Grande and the Antilles to the strait of Magellan. 
Notions of autonomy and even of independence began to 
be entertained. With the acquisition of political inde- 
pendence, evolution in every direction began. Naturally, 
its advance was not parallel; but the stripling republics — 
vacillating and halting — began to experiment, sought to 
orientate themselves. By 1840 divergencies became evi- 
dent. The play of non-Iberian intellectual influences mani- 
fested themselves here and there. Beginning with, say, 
1850, and extending the analysis to the present time, ir 
seems possible to group the republics according to the 
sources of inspiration and equipment. 



Before attempting a distribution on the basis of the 
direct influence of non-Iberian ideas on official instruc- 
tion, we must recognize that the strongest non-Iberian 
intellectual and artistic influence exerted on the middle 
and southern countries of America was that of France. 
Fiance has projected herself upon the world, not, I be- 
lieve, bv effort, bv direct national, institutional or individ- 
ual propaganda, but in spite of a lack of national intent 
and effort and even in spite of a certain superciliousness 
and scorn, which are characteristic of the attitude of 
France toward non-Gallic peoples and things. 

It is not unnatural to suppose that one of the chief 
reasons of the ascendancy of French ideas in the countries 
we are discussing is to be found in the ease with which 
the French language can be acquired by those whose na- 
tive tongue is Spanish or Portuguese. Too much im- 
portance can hardly be given to this factor. People are 
prone to take the easier of several roads that lead from 
their localities out into the larger world. If to this ease 
of access, the road seems more interesting, the direction 
of the excursion is assured. Xot only was the French 
language easier to our southern neighbors, but French 
thought and culture seemed to them more romantic, more 
Latin, and hence more comprehensible. The English and 
German languages have always been pretty solid barviers ; 
they are not readily learned by those of Spanish or Portu- 
guese speech. French philosophy, French literature, 
French art and French ideas of education began to be 
wrought into the fabric of the several civilizations soon 
after freedom was attained; and whenever texts, not in 
the vernacular, have been introduced, they have invariably 
been in French. French texts are not translated, as a 
rule; while, in the few cases in which English, German 
or Italian texts have *been used, they have been translated. 

This is a general statement as to French influence 
and is applicable to all the peoples, although in a varying 
degree : in some, French influence has been less marked 
than in others. 

I now offer a rough grouping of the nations. 

1. Those in which the influence of France has not 
only dominated, but has been almost the sole extra-Iberian 
influence in the realm of official instruction, are the fol- 
lowing: Colombia, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, 
Haiti, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico, Salvador, 
Honduras. This influence is seen most strongly in the 



philosophy of instruction; in the organization of the 
colegios, institutes and llceos, modeled on the French 
lycees; in the tendency toward encyclopedism, rather than 
toward specialization; in emphasis on the practical in 
primary and secondary instruction ; and in the equipment 
of laboratories. In the material equipment of schools of 
lower grade, that is, in desks and seats, we see not in- 
frequently the influence of the United States. 

Inasmuch as Haiti belonged to France, and as the 
language of the people is French, almost no other foreign 
influence is perceivable. French influence on the institu- 
tions of the Dominican Republic has been strong, both 
because of its proximity to Haiti, and for the reasons 
already given above. Since the occupation by the United 
States, however, our influence has been felt on instruction. 

Within the last fifteen years Ecuador has received 
not a little impress from the United States, due to the 
influence of one or two commanding personalities. 

Mexico, owing to her proximity and to the fact that 
many Mexicans have been educated in the United States, 
has incorporated not a few of our ideas. The tendency, 
in spite of the strained relations that have existed be- 
tween the United States and Mexico during the past 
decade, seems to be to incorporate elements more and 
more approximating those that have proven valuable in 
our primary and secondary instruction. 

French influence greatly predominates in Venezuela. 
It is manifest, not only in the schools of primary and sec- 
ondary instruction, but also and especially in the profes- 
sional and technical institutions. Not only are the labora- 
tories of the medical schools supplied with French instru- 
ments and apparatus, but many of the texts are of French 
origin and in French, and many of the professors have 
been trained in France. After the breaking out of the 
recent war, however, Germans resident in Venezuela made 
a decided effort to have German ideas and practice intro- 
duced into the faculty of medicine of the Universidad Cen- 
tral in Caracas, and they met with some success. Some 
ten years ago a Venezuelan educator was sent to the 
United States to study methods of instruction. After his 
return to his country, he suggested certain changes in 
methods of instruction. Some of them were adopted by 
the ministry of public instruction, and they have been 
incorporated in the Venezuelan system. More recently 
there lias been a tendency among the medical students 



to seek instruction in Italy, and a number have spent two 
or three years at the Regia Universita Degli Studi of Pisa. 

Colombia and Bolivia, both somewhat isolated, in 
respect of the other nations, have developed on the founda- 
tion of primitive Spanish ideas, with few outside in- 
fluences other than French. 

Guatemala, Salvador and Honduras, in addition to 
French contributions, have been influenced mainly by our 
ideas and example. 

2. The republics whose official instruction, in addi- 
tion to French influences, seem to have been most strongly 
effected by our ideas are Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Costa 
Rica, Nicaragua, Cuba, Panama. 

As early as 1850, the attention of Domingo Faustino 
Sarmiento, the greatest of the Argentine educators, be- 
came fixed on the United States as a source from which 
his country ought to draw in this respect. When he came 
to the United States as minister of Argentina in 1864, he 
made the acquaintance of Horace Mann, and he was deeply 
impressed by our school methods and particularly by the 
preparation given to teachers in our normal schools. When 
he returned to Argentina, he is said to have arranged for 
the introduction of some fifty well trained teachers from 
the United States. They were scattered throughout the 
republic, and they exerted a marked influence on instruc- 
tion. Some of these teachers are still living in Argentina 
and they have made a good name for themselves and their 
countrv. The Universidad de La Plata, in the city of 
La Plata, the capital of the province of Buenos Aires, 
and but two hours from the city of Buenos Aires, is a new 
and well equipped institution modeled on our universities. 
The influence of the United States is very manifest in the 
six or eight admirably conducted agricultural schools and 
experiment stations of the country. 

Unquestionably Sarmiento and the tendencies of of- 
ficial instruction in Argentina influenced Uraguay and 
Paraguay. Jose Pedro Varela, looked upon as the Horace 
Mann of Uruguay, published his famous Education del 
pueblo in 1871. It is saturated with the spirit and the 
thought of our leading educators. In the first chapter 
alone are quotations drawn from Daniel Webster, Horace 
Mann and William E. Channing. Its publication produced 
a deep impression on the national mind and marked a turn- 
ing point in the history of official instruction in Uruguay. 
Within recent years a number of technical experts have 



been introduced from the United States as professors, or 
as directors of institutions during their formative period. 
Some ten years ago Jesse Hopkins of the United States 
went to Montevideo to become physical director of the 
Young Men's Christian Association there. After he had 
been in Uruguay for some months, the minister of public 
instruction appointed him physical director of the re- 
public, giving him carte blanche, with the result that physi" 
cal training throughout the republic was so changed, and 
so many of our methods, apparatus, exercises and games 
have been introduced, that one can hardly distinguish the 
more highly developed Uruguayan school and playground 
from those of a similar character in the United States. 

The influence of the United States on Paraguay has 
been somewhat indirect, through Argentina and Uruguay, 
and through the impression produced on a number of 
Paraguayans that have attended our universities and com- 
pleted their studies here. 

I have already alluded to Peru, where not only has 
the influence of the United States been felt for two dec- 
ades, but where at the present time radical changes are 
being made to shape the whole educational system after 
ours. The rector of one of the oldest institutions of Amer- 
ica, the Universidad del Cuzco, in Peru, is a Pennsylvanian 
and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. The 
Universidad del Cuzco, which ministers to a large part of 
Peru that is entirely isolated from Lima, has been in- 
fluenced to its foundations by the presence and thought 
of the persistent and sturdy Yankee. 

We hardly need to be reminded that, on the achieve- 
ment of her independence, Cuba was under the tutelage 
and direction of the United States for two years, and that 
tiie whole spirit and method of official instruction then 
underwent a radical change in harmony with the general 
tendencies of our system. 

Unofficially, but none the less really, a similar de- 
velopment look place in (he republic of Panama from her 
birth. 

Costa Rica ami Nicaragua have received very consid- 
erable contributions from the United Slates through rep- 
resentatives of those nations thai have studied here, and 
through the influence of a number of our teachers that 
were employed by the Costa Rican ami Nicaraguan 
governments. 



3. Brazil, in this respect, as in that of local autono- 
my, initiative and administration, occupies a place apart. 
Naturally, the first influences were Portuguese; the next 
were French. The French language is almost as common 
among cultivated people in Brazil as Portuguese. Many 
Brazilian authors write a book in French for every one 
in Portuguese, and the influence of France on all the as- 
pects of intellectual life is marked. Owing, however, to 
the very considerable influx of Italian and German immi- 
gration, Italian and German thought have exercised not 
a little influence on the Brazilian people. I think, how- 
ever, that outside of schools maintained by the Italian- 
speaking and German-speaking communities, few Italian 
or German elements have been incorporated in official 
instruction. 

4. Chile, like Brazil, occupies a place by herself. 
Owing to her isolation and her strongly individualistic 
character, the initial, dominantly Spanish influences en- 
dured longer in her case than elsewhere, and they de- 
veloped along strongly nationalistic lines. The first out- 
side influence, apart from the pervasive French thought, 
which seems to have penetrated her institutions less than 
those of the other republics, was that which came from 
Argentina, with the great Argentine expatriates, Sar- 
miento, Alberdi, Mitre and Echeverria, who spent some 
time in Chile and whose ideas found fertile soil there. A 
still greater foreign influence was that of the peerless Vene- 
zuelan, Andres Bello, who, after a few years spent in 
Europe — on the continent and in England — took up his 
abode in Chile. He was instrumental in the establish- 
ment of the Universidad de Chile and in the codification 
of the laws. His was the greatest literary, rhetorical, lin- 
guistic and pedagogical influence exerted on the whole of 
South America, and his ideas deeply affected Chilean 
institutions of instruction. 

Some sixty years ago there was a strong influx of Ger- 
mans, and, later, of German thought, into Chile ; and the 
Instituto Pedigogiea, the teachers' college of the Universi- 
dad de Chile, was shaped by Germans. The German in- 
fluence was at its height during the decade that preceded 
the breaking out of the great war. It seems to have de- 
clined since then. 

English influence has also been strong in Chile in the 
navy and in the training of naval officers ever since the 
time of Admiral Cochrane and the struggle for inde- 



pendence. This influence has been heightened by the resi- 
dence of a number of prominent families of British origin 
and by the commercial methods of British subjects. For 
more than a decade, however, Chile has been steadily 
turning to the United States for ideas of instruction. 
Several commissions have been sent to this country to 
study our institutions, and a number of Chileans that 
now occupy prominent positions in educational institu- 
tions were trained here. Some of the school equipment 
was manufactured in the United States. I myself have 
examined school desks that were imported into Chile from 
the United States forty-five years ago. They are still in 
perfect condition, without' stain or' mark of penknife, 
Avhich speaks well for the sense of propriety or the inhibi- 
tions of Chilean boys. Can you imagine that would be the 
state of a school desk that might have been in constant 
use for fortv-five years anv where in the United States? 



IV 
THE EXTENT OF OFFICIAL INSTRUCTION 

Misconceptions regarding the middle and southern 
republics of America are rife among us. These nations 
are commonly conceived of as a block ; we assume that by 
calling them "Latin- American" we have described them; 
and they present themselves to our average consciousness 
as a more or less homogeneous whole. They must be sep- 
arated and analyzed individually, with due regard to their 
diversity, based on many factors, past and present. 

Probably in no respects have these republics been more 
misunderstood than -in those of the quality and extent of 
instruction and of the obstacles that have been and still 
are encountered in one or another country by those re- 
sponsible for official instruction. 

As I have already said, instruction seems to be as 
ample and thorough within certain groups in the several 
countries as it is within groups of the same character in 
the United States. The extent of these groups and their 
relation to the whole population vary with the country. 
The groups or portions of the population that I have in 
mind consist of Europeans and their descendants, and of 
the mestizos, Indians, mulattos, negroes or zambos that 



. have lived in close relations with Europeans or their de- 
scendants, all of whom together constitute the enlightened 
elements of the nations. Outside of this group or portion 
are the many Indians and other racial elements that are 
wholly illiterate, more or less isolated, not interested in 
education, lacking in ambition, impervious, stolid, hostile. 
The numbers of these portions of the populations vary 
greatly according to the country. It is their attitude that 
has not been appreciated by our people, and it is regard- 
ing it that most nonsense has been spoken and written in 
this country. Our travelers, our ill informed but venture- 
some writers of books, our journalists and even persons 
in high places among us have assumed that the adminis- 
trations of the different republics under discussion ought 
to have made provisions for the instruction of all these 
uneducated elements, that if they do not make such pro- 
vision they are blameworthy, that all the elements of each 
nation are immediately capable of being educated, in the 
sense in which we use the word, and, indeed, that they are 
clamoring for and being denied instruction. 

The facts, as I see them, are that all the governments 
and all the leaders of thought in the middle and southern 
countries of America are as thoroughly convinced of the 
wisdom and justice of extending popular instruction to the 
whole people as our government and our leaders of 
thought ; that serious and persistent effort has been and is 
being made to this end ; that in many of the countries it is 
impossible to extend instruction of any kind to all the 
people, both because some of the republics lack the neces- 
sary funds, and because, owing to the isolation of numer- 
ous elements of the population and to their indifference or 
hostility to instruction, they are still unreachable by 
any means known to man. 

In order that this aspect of the question may be ap- 
preciated, and that we may become aware of the extent 
of instruction, I now offer a brief analysis of the popula- 
tions. It will be seen that the extent and quality of in- 
struction depends on the proportion of European or slight- 
ly diluted European stock that exists in each country. I 
group the countries as follows : 

1. Those in which the European stock prevails, and 
which are characterized by intellectual and social solidar- 
ity, easy and rapid means of communication and trans- 
portation, a common language, and, consequently, a wide 



diffusion of instruction. They are Argentina, Uruguay, 
Chile, Cuba, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama. 

i a ) Argentina, with a population of approximately 
9,000,000 inhabitants, possesses a vastly greater proportion 
of European stock than the United States of Amer- 
ica. It has about 18,000 aboriginal or uncivilized Indians, 
about 50,000 civilized Indians, a few hundred negroes of 
pure blood, probably 100,000 mulattos (persons with less 
negro than white blood) and some 200,000 persons with 
an admixture of Indian blood. Most of the republic is ac- 
cessible by railways, water transportation or good high- 
wavs; schools are wiclelv disseminated; there are six 
universities, the largest of which has about 8,000 students ; 
a number of normal schools, provincial colleges, profes- 
sional schools, well equipped and highly efficient agricul- 
tural colleges, hundreds of newspapers, scores of public 
libraries. 

(b) In the population of Uruguay, the proportion 
of European stock is even higher than in Argentina ; the 
country is compact, practically all parts are accessible 
and covered with railways ; and official instruction is more 
widely disseminated than in any other country of middle 
or southern America. There is a school for every 128 
children, and adequate provision is made for the impart- 
ing of instruction of every kind required by an enlight- 
ened people. 

(c) Although the proportion of indigenes in Chile, 
particularly in the provinces of the extreme north, is 
higher than in Argentina and Uruguay, and although, 
owing to the peculiar topography of the country, there 
are parts that are still inaccessible, European stock pre- 
vails; official instruction is highly developed and efficient, 
and it is possible to extend it to all the elements of the 
population within a few decades. 

(<l\ Although the proportion of European stock 
in Cuba is less than in the three countries just mentioned, 
the population is so dense, the economic condition of the 
republic lias been so satisfactory and all regions are so 
accessible, thai instruction is widely diffused, well ad- 
ministered and readily capable of being carried to all 
the people. There are practically no indigenes or isolated 
groups. 

(e) In Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama the 
European elements prevail, instruction is widely dissemi- 



nated and the problem of ministering to a large impervious 
population does not exist. 

2. Those in which the European elements are in the 
minority, and in which, owing to lack of racial homo- 
geneity and a common language, and to what may be 
termed "mass impenetrability,'' as well as to a dearth of 
means of communication and transportation, the problem 
of instruction is difficult to solve. They are Brazil, Mex- 
ico, Peru, Bolivia, Haiti. This classification is in no 
sense a reflection on the. republics of this list : they vary 
greatly among themselves and their one common char- 
acteristic, in respect of official instruction, is the difficulty 
of reaching the whole mass of their populations. 

(a) Many of the best schools of America are to be 
found in Brazilian centers of population along the sea- 
board. In certain regions, however, there are aboriginal 
masses that have not been, and can not readily be, ap- 
proached. Both the national government and the state 
governments are making commendable efforts to carry 
instruction to all the people, but it is still materially im- 
possible to do so, both because the outlay of funds would 
be too great, and because the nature of the indigenes is 
such as would render it necessary not only to establish 
schools and provide teachers, but also to maintain an army 
of soldiers or policemen to compel interest in and atten- 
dance on instruction. 

( b) ' Mexico, Pern and Bolivia afford striking illus- 
trations of the imperviousness of the indigenous elements 
of the populations; add to this factor the physical. condi- 
tions of these countries, which cause the isolation of nu- 
merous groups, and you have the explanation of conditions 
that have existed since the conquest. The school authori- 
ties of these republics have had to face and they continue 
to face insuperable difficulties. Means do not exist on earth 
to educate large masses of the populations of these coun- 
tries; time, with the rearing of new and gradually altered 
generations, can alone solve the problem. A single illustra- 
tion will suffice, as it is characteristic. Among the Cora 
Indians of the Sierra del Xayarit in Mexico, I found, in 
the village of La Mesa, which consisted of about five hun- 
dred Indians, a well built school-house, with a Mexican 
teacher, apparently of Spanish blood, kept there by the 
federal government. He was intelligent and he seemed 
to be conscientious. He confessed to being well paid, and, 
although remote from the world, he said he would be con- 



tent with his lot, if he could only make any impression 
on the Indians. There were, according to his estimate, a 
hundred children in the community that ought to be in 
school. The enrolment was eight, and the average at- 
tendance five. He was the father of eight children; they 
were all enrolled as pupils; and the average attendance 
was contributed by his family. He lamented the situation 
and deplored the impenetrability of the Indians, saying — 
to quote his impressive words — "As many soldiers as 
there are children would be necessary to make them go 
to school." 

This lack of interest, this persistence of racial traits 
and habits, this hostility to the "white man's foolishness" — 
as an old Indian chief put it to me — is all characteristic 
of the American indigenes wheresoever found to-day, and 
those that have not faced the difficulty personally can 
form no conception of its gravity. 

(c) The situation in Haiti is similar to the one with 
which we are familiar in some parts of South Carolina, 
Mississippi and Louisiana, where the negro population 
is densest. There is, however, a difference between the 
conditions in Haiti and in these communities. In our 
South the negroes, of all types, occupations and localities, 
share the general economic vigor of the United States; 
they are constantly stimulated to physical and mental 
exertion by the people and institutions of their localities ; 
and they live in a less enervating climate than that of 
Haiti. It may be assumed therefore that the method of giv- 
ing adequate instruction to the whole population of this 
republic will continue to be one of the most difficult of 
American problems. 

3. The countries in which, although the European 
elements are more numerous than in the second group, the 
situation is still complicated by the presence of a con- 
siderable mass of impenetrable population. They are 
Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay, Honduras, Sal- 
vador, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic. Condi- 
tions vary among these countries, and each of them might 
well be studied in detail, if time permitted. Colombia and 
Ecuador still have many untaught and inaccessible in- 
digenes; in Venezuela, Paraguay and other republics of 
this group, the problem is mainly one of inertia on the 
part of the uneducated elements, rather than of inaccessi- 
bility or fixed hostility. They present no difficulty that 



can no.t be solved by energetic effort, since the indigenous 
elements are inconsiderable. 

A word should be added regarding the difference be- 
tween the problem of the education of Indians that live 
in isolated communities and that of the education of our 
Southern negroes. I speak now of»the Indians that have 1 
survived in the parts of America we are studying. It 
may be said that the higher types of the aborigines have 
disappeared, due to numerous causes that may not now 
be enumerated. Those that remain and that live in their 
primitive isolation may be considered the residue, the 
leavings, who were too indifferent, too supine and too weak 
for conflict and destruction or for assimilation. They 
have never been brought into intellectual relationship with 
Europeans or their institutions. Our negroes, on the 
other hand, have all passed through the disciplinary proc- 
ess of intimate life with white people. They, in the per- 
sons of their ancestors, were distributed among the whites 
and subjected to a species of training ; and for generations 
they have been surrounded by civilizing influences. Above 
all, they speak and understand English. Many millions of 
the Indians do not speak or understand the language of 
their white neighbors, that is, of the dominating elements 
of the countries in which they live. They are still as re- 
mote from European ideas and civilization as they were 
four hundred years ago. 



THE QUALITY OF INSTRUCTION; TENDENCIES 

AND RESULTS 

Instruction, as a rule, has been more encyclopedic, 
more theoretical, more artistic, more literary; less practi- 
cal, less technical, less addressed to the business of earn- 
ing a livelihood, "than in the United States. 

Attention is at once attracted to the non-academic 
character of university professors. Above the normal 
school, there exists no teaching profession. Almost with- 
out exception, the professors are physicians, lawyers, ad- 
ministrative officers of the governments, ecclesiastics, en- 
gineers; in short, professional men that earn their living 
in their several professions, but who, for one reason or an- 
other, devote a small portion of their time to instruction 
in the institutions maintained by the governments. While 
the disadvantages of such a condition of things is evident, 



it is supposed that such instructors, by rubbing elbows con- 
stantly with the hard realities of life, are less academic 
and hence better guides than ours for the young. 

From the normal school down, the teachers are thor- 
oughly trained, and teaching is regarded as a career. There 
are good normal schools in almost all the countries ; those 
of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Cuba, Chile and 
Costa Rica are noteworthy. 

The theory is good everywhere ; for the modern schools 
of most of the countries compare favorably with ours; 
there is a tendency, however, to over-elaborateness in labo- 
ratory equipment. At any rate, one gets the impression 
that occasionally the numerous fine instruments and ap- 
paratus one generally encounters are not sufficiently com- 
prehended and utilized by the teaching staffs. 



VI 

METHODS OF COOPERATION 

I have been asked to make suggestions in respect of 
cooperation. Among our educators there is a very per- 
ceptible and lively interest in cooperating with the other 
peoples of America. What can we do? What shall we 
do? What are the points of contact? Have we some- 
thing to offer? Is there something we can learn from our 
neighbors? If so, what are the channels of approach, what 
are the vehicles of transmission? 

It has seemed to me that, for all our good intentions, 
as a people, we are still far removed from our neighbors 
of Spanish and Portuguese speech. We have a long road 
to travel before we shall be ready for cooperation. A 
change of heart and mind and point of view and attitude 
is necessary. We need, first of all, a deep and persistent 
and patient interest; then, knowledge, intimate knowl- 
edge, knowledge based on reading, travel, thought, a sur- 
mounting of the barrier of language, the comprehension 
of different psychologies, and, above all, the understand- 
ing of divers backgrounds, of the difficulties our neighbors 
have had to meet, of the road by which they have come 
to their present estate. 

The situation is delicate. Those that have represented 
ns have expressed us badly. Many .travelers from our 
midst, with the best of intentions, have seemed to go as 



imparters, bestowers, as condescending disseminators of 

information and of the superior wealth of our civilisation,. 
rather than as sympathetic observers and students. We 
must right ourselves, and it may take as long to do so as 
it has taken to wrong ourselves. 

We hear much of the exchange of professors and stu- 
dents. The practical effecting of exchanges is attended 
with difficulties, although none may be insuperable. Few 
professors, either of our country or of the other American 
countries, are properly equipped for such exchanges. Pro- 
fessors of ours that are capable of imparting knowledge 
in Spanish or Portuguese are, with few exceptions, to be 
found in the departments of Romance languages. What 
thev can give is what our southern neighbors already have 
in superior quantity and quality. They do not desire that 
we shall teach them Spanish or Portuguese or that we shall 
lecture to them on Spanish or Portuguese literature. They 
would welcome our educators, our historians, our psychol- 
ogists and sociologists, our economists, our engineers, our 
physicians, our jurisconsults; but in their presence such 
are dumb, except through the cumbersome and uninspir- 
ing means of interpreters. 

Our neighbors are in much the same plight, although 
they are better qualified than we, since most of their in- 
structors are, as I have said, professional men or men of 
affairs, and some of them are quite capable of lecturing in 
English. 

The so-called exchange of students is, in the main, not 
an exchange, looked at from our point of view. We as- 
sume that most of the students would come from the other 
countries to the United States; few of our students en- 
tertain the idea of studying in the other American coun- 
tries. It might be as well to drop the phrase "exchange 
of students," and limit ourselves to welcoming such stu- 
dents as come to us from the other American countries, 
to making them feel at home, to surrounding them with 
the most helpful influences : influences that shall express 
to them the best of our civilization. 

Reason and the experience of many individuals and 
institutions seem to demonstrate the unwisdom of our 
seeking to induce adolescent' students to come to the 
United States to study. It is natural to suppose that those 
that are to be the future citizens of countries should receive 
their first education among their own people, that they 
should remain among them until their characters be 



formed, lest they be denationalized by residence and study 
.abroad and return to their homes unfitted to comprehend, 
and to participate in, the national life. Mature students 
may well be encouraged to come to us and be accorded 
all possible opportunities. 

Probably one of the easiest and most productive meth- 
ods of interamerican cooperation would be the establish- 
ment of contact through technical institutions — schools of 
engineering, agricultural colleges and experiment sta- 
tions, medical schools, et cetera. A thorough knowledge 
of the language of the particular country is not so neces- 
sary wiien students are doing things together : contact, 
which is the essential thing, is thereby made possible and 
necessary during long periods of companionship, experi- 
mentation and cooperation. 

More important, however, than all avowed and direct 
effort are knowledge, appreciation and good will. The 
intellectual leaders of peoples, and especially the educa- 
tors, hold in their hands the shaping of international re- 
lations : when once the leaders of thought in all the Ameri- 
can countries are really aroused to the need and possibility 
of better acquaintance and cooperation; when all the na- 
tions of America shall seem as important to the people of 
each nation as their own nation herself, there will be no 
necessity of discussion or of getting together; we shall 
already be together as one people. 



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